Jewelry is often given at special occasions, such as birthdays, anniversaries, vacations or other memorable life events. Participants often wish to relive these memories; however, the moment itself is often not recorded or the recording is lost among other recordings and can lose its intended close association with the jewelry. Therefore there is a need to provide methods that closely associate gemstones or jewelry, with a mechanism to record and retrieve special memories.
Among the precious gems, pearls are some of the most special and unique. A pearl is formed from a biological process. In particular, it is a mollusk's natural defense against a foreign particle. The particle acts as an irritant and stimulates secretion of a viscous substance, which hardens into a nacre coating around the particle. The desirability of pearls has led to theft widespread cultivation within a variety of mollusks. Among these Pinctada fucata, Pinctada maxima, Pictanda margaritifera have become some of the more popular sources for pearl production however mollusks such as abalone, conch and others are also currently used to produce highly sought after pearls.
Pearl farming is a well-established practice, where a foreign particle, typically referred to as a bead in the form of a polymeric sphere, a broken shell or a piece of mantle tissue, is seeded into a recipient mollusk and the mollusk is permitted to coat the bead with the nacre to form the pearl. U.S. Pat. No. 7,062,940 issued to Huynh provides a clever improvement to this approach where a gemstone is seeded into the mollusk and the resulting pearl is carved to expose the underlying gemstone nucleus, thereby producing a number of eye catching designs that combine the beauty of pearls, the implanted gemstones and the artistry of the carving itself. While a number of pearls have been artistically carved, the beauty in the gem is still limited to its appearance.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is commonly used in tracking purposes, often to replace bar codes. RFID tags contain an antenna and a memory chip that stores data. Identifying or reading the data is accomplished using an RFID reader. RFID tags have become widespread in the retail industry by helping stores to keep track of inventory. RFID tags are also used in the cattle industry to monitor feeding and tracking of possible spread of disease through recording and comparing the positioning of animals over time.
RFID tags have also been incorporated into pearls. In WO2005/015986, a method of making a pearl is demonstrated where an RFID chip is fixed to the surface of the nucleus before the nucleus is inserted into the pearl oyster. This prevents identifying information specific to each pearl from being erased for tracking or classification purposes. Similarly, CN102332106B provides an approach to identify and manage pearls by embedding an RFID chip in a pearl for identification purposes. The RFID chip is added after boring into the pearl because the chip could be easily damaged if provided as part of a nucleus. While this approach may be used to track pearls, it lacks any mechanism to record or re-live a special memory.
Near field communication (NFC) is a more finely honed version of RFID. It operates within a maximum range of about 4-10 cm and can operate in one- or two-way communication. NFC communication involves the modulation of an electric field or a magnetic field. NFC-enabled features are now commonly integrated into smart phones. This technology is being adopted for financial transactions where touching a NFC smart phone to a NFC checkout terminal, instructs payment thereby replacing credit cards. In addition, data can be shared directly between NFC smart phones by just tapping phones together. While NFC has been adapted for mobile payments or sharing data between NFC devices, its use is limited to certain transactions and does not associate jewelry with a special memory.